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Iran has been preparing Palestinian terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon to retaliate in the case of Israeli strikes against Tehran’s nuclear sites, according to Egyptian security officials speaking to WND.

The security officials said Tehran was convinced the Jewish state was going to attack its suspected nuclear sites in September, prompting Iran to hold joint military drills with Gazan jihad groups in August, including with Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Similar drills were held in August with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

Those drills were conducted by Iranian Revolutionary Guard members, the officials said. The exercises focused largely on coordinated missile onslaughts from both Gaza and Lebanon aimed at blanketing the Jewish.

According to the Egyptian security officials, any attack against Iran or Syria would result in an immediate Iranian missile campaign against Israel using proxies in Gaza and Lebanon.

The international news media has been replete with reports in recent days speculating Israel is strongly considering striking Iran’s suspected illicit nuclear sites.
Read more:Iran prepping for missile attack on Israel

Arab and Turkish journalists and media are big time lairs and biased to the core

By Mike Evans

On May 31, Israel walked straight into a trap—a trap set by a group of so-called activists determined to break Israeli attempts to halt the flow of arms and war materiel into the Gaza strip.

Having been warned in advance that the intent of the Free Gaza movement flotilla was to shatter the Israeli blockade, the IDF prepared to board the ships and divert them to Ashdod for inspection. A member of the Free Gaza organization credited with launching the flotilla, Greta Berlin, clarified the intent of the group: “We’re not trying to be a humanitarian mission.”

Apparently, Israel was ill-informed that the ship carried 700 pro-Palestinian activists prepared to do whatever necessary to reach their goal. American-born pro-Palestinian activist Hawaida Arraf threw down the gauntlet with the assertion: “We fully intend to go to Gaza regardless of any intimidation or threats of violence against us. They are going to have to forcefully stop us.”

According to Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon “the armada of hate and violence in support of the Hamas terror organization was a premeditated and outrageous provocation. The organizers are well-known for their ties to Global Jihad, Al-Qaeda and Hamas. They have a history of arms smuggling and deadly terror. On board the ship we found weapons that were prepared in advance and used against our forces…”

A number of the passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara Turkish passenger ship suspected of having connections with Global Jihad-affiliated terrorist organizations have refused to provide proper identification to the Israeli authorities. Many were carrying envelopes containing thousands of dollars in cash.

During a search of the ship on Tuesday a cache of bulletproof vests, night-vision goggles, and gas masks was discovered. A defense official stated, “This is the group that was behind the violent [attack] against the naval commandos. They came on board the ship prepared and after they had trained for the expected Navy takeover.”

When confronted by the Israelis, five of the six ships’ captains diverted to Ashdod; the sixth was decidedly on a mission of defiance. Obviously, the mistake made by the IDF was to assume that the voyagers on board the Mavi Marmara were a charitable group. Rather, it was loaded with pro-Palestinian terrorists, not with the specified humanitarian agenda, and determined to create an international media incident.

The IDF deployed about a dozen soldiers with the intent of taking the bridge and diverting the flotilla to the Israeli port. Instead, the troops fell into the hands of an angry mob of rioters armed with clubs, knives, scissors, pepper spray, and with side arms after having disarmed several IDF soldiers.

The Israelis boarded with non-lethal paintball guns, the kind used by teens on paintball courses, and pistols they never thought they would have to unholster. Video shows the unsuspecting IDF paratroopers being assaulted as they reached the deck. One IDF soldier was thrown over a railing to a deck 30 feet below.

In a statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he reiterated that this was “a clear case of self-defense because as our soldiers were inspecting these ships, they were attacked—they were almost lynched. They were attacked…and they had to defend themselves—they were going to be killed. Israel will not allow its soldiers to be lynched and neither would any other self-respecting country.”

Israel will become the target for every terrorist worldwide. Now more than ever America must stand with our only true ally in the Middle East

Israel has maintained the 4-year blockade to halt the flow of weapons from Iran to Hamas, its armed and funded proxy in Gaza. In November 2009, the Israeli navy intercepted a huge cache of weapons headed from Iran to Hezbollah and Hamas onboard Francop, a German container ship. The markings on the materiel discovered were clearly Iranian. The ship carried some 3,000 missiles including Katyusha rockets.

The Israeli embargo against Gaza has become more powerful than rockets; it created the perfect storm, the Vietnam, for the State of Israel. The secular media, which has always been prone to call terrorists “activists,” only encourages such actions.

In 2008, Israeli President Shimon Peres held a “Facing Tomorrow” conference to which he invited some of the most noted thinkers in the world. One of the conclusions of the meeting was that wars of the 21st Century would be fought first as a media war, secondly as an economic war, thirdly as a proxy war, and finally with boots on the ground. Israel has lost this media war and is well on the way to losing the economic war.

Israel ceded Gaza in hopes of achieving peace in the region; its hopes were dashed. Hamas continued to lob some 1,200 missiles across the border at innocent Jewish civilians. Despite the ongoing provocation, Israel has allowed food and humanitarian supplies into Gaza through the Red Cross and UN.

This skirmish came amid plans for a meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Barack Obama. The aim of the summit was to keep Iran at the top of the agenda, not the Palestinian Authority.

Iran found the perfect means to distract the liberal media—create a flag-waving, humanitarian crisis. The resulting propaganda-driven riots worldwide would certainly take attention from the IAEA announcement that Iran now possesses more than two tons of enriched uranium—enough for two nuclear warheads.

If you were sitting in the seat of power in ancient Persia, what would you do when confronted with new sanctions against your nuclear program? You would sponsor a David-versus-Goliath flotilla—a media extravaganza—carrying a Nobel Peace Prize winner, an American activist, and a Holocaust survivor. Central casting could not have done it better.

The question becomes: When is a humanitarian mission not a humanitarian mission? It fails the test when it is peopled with terrorists on a suicide mission.

International activists aboard the flotilla of ships on their way to the Gaza Strip opened fire on IDF soldiers who boarded the ships to prevent them from breaking the Israeli-imposed sea blockade, the IDF said Monday.

According to the IDF, the international activists “prepared a lynch” for the soldiers who boarded the ships at about 2 a.m. Monday morning after calling on them to stop, or follow them to the Ashdod Port several hours earlier.

According to IDF reports, at least 10 activists were killed during the ensuing clashes. Six Navy commandos were also wounded, some of them from gunfire and at least one was in a serious condition with a head wound. Foreign reports claimed that the number of dead was close to 15. Some of the wounded were evacuated to Israeli hospital by Air Force helicopters.

Upon boarding the ships, the soldiers encountered fierce resistance from the passengers who were armed with knives, bats and metal pipes. The soldiers used non-lethal measures to disperse the crowd. The activists succeeded in stealing the weapon from one of the IDF’s soldiers and reportedly opened fire, leading to an escalation in violence.

Al Jazeera on Monday broadcasted footage from the Gaza flotilla’s lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, showing Israeli Navy commandos boarding the ship. Helicopters could also be seen flying overhead.

“It was like a well-planned lynch,” one IDF officer said. “These people were anything but peace activists.”

The IDF said that the ships would be taken to the Ashdod Port where, despite the violence, the cargo that are carrying will be inspected and then transferred to the Gaza Strip via land crossings. Israeli Navy commander Vice-Admiral Eliezer Marom was commanding over the operation from sea.

The Navy made initial contact with the flotilla at 11 p.m. on Sunday ordering the ships to follow them to Ashdod Port or otherwise be boarded.
The actual boarding of the ships took place at 2 a.m. Monday and was yet to be completed by 8 a.m.

Activists aboard the ships repeatedly said they would not respond with violence to the navy’s interception of their flotilla prior to the boarding.
Al-Jazeera reported Turkish leaders called an emergency meeting to discuss responses to the attack at sea. The Israeli ambassador in Turkey was called in to offer explanations, according to a report.

Hamas Prime Minister Haniyeh came on Al-Jazeera to condemn the “brutal attack” and called on the UN to intervene on the activists’ behalf.
The ministry condemned Monday’s raid on the ship carrying pro-Palestinian activists, called it unacceptable and demanded an “urgent explanation” from Israel. It says Israel violated international laws and will suffer consequences.

A popular Hamas children’s program that usually gives advice to youngsters, such as instructing them to listen to their parents, aired a call for the “slaughter” of Jews in Israel late last month, according to Palestinian Media Watch.

All Jews must be “erased from our land,” Nassur, a stuffed bear who hosts the weekly program, Tomorrow’s Pioneers, on Hamas’s Al-Aksa television, explained to a child who called in to a September 22 show. “We want to slaughter them, Saraa, so they will be expelled from our land… we’ll have to [do it] by slaughter.”

Nan Jacques Zilberdik, an analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, which translated the program and regularly monitors Palestinian media, said Tomorrow’s Pioneers, which comes out of the Gaza Strip, is available via satellite around the world. The program often blends pragmatic advice with hate, she said.

“Generally the program also transmits good messages to kids like drinking milk or asking parents permission to do something, but we also find these very problematic messages like the call to kill Jews,” she said.

Furthermore, Zilberdik said that in her organization’s broader monitoring of Palestinian media, no objections to or repudiation of hatred-inciting messages being included in children’s programs had been found.

This is not the first time Palestinian Media Watch has discovered hateful content in programs made for children.

In 2007, the NGO discovered a Mickey Mouse-type figure who also called for the slaughter of Jews.

After worldwide outcry, the character was executed on the program by an Israeli interrogator, and was soon replaced by another character who expressed similar sentiments, Zilberdik said.

The following comes from a transcript of the program aired on September 22:

Nassur: “There won’t be any Jews or Zionists, if Allah wills. They’ll be erased.”

Saraa: “Chased away.”

Nassur: “And just like we will visit the Qaaba [in Mecca]… everyone will visit Jerusalem.”

(A seven-year-old boy on the phone tells how his father, a member of Hamas’s Izzadin Kassam Brigades, “died as a shahid (martyr).”)

Nassur to boy: “What do you want to do to the Jews who shot your father?”

Boy: “I want to kill them.”

Saraa: “We don’t want to do anything to them, just expel them from our land.”

Nassur: “We want to slaughter (nidbah-hom) them, so they will be expelled from our land, right?”

Saraa: “Yes. That’s right. We will expel them from our land using all means.”

Nassur: “And if they don’t want [to go] peacefully, by words or talking, we’ll have to [do it] by slaughter (shaht).”

ASHKELON, Israel — As it pushes for international action against Iran‘s nuclear program, Israel is steadily assembling one of the world’s most advanced missile defense systems, a multi-layered collection of weapons meant to guard against a variety of threats, including the shorter-range Grads used to strike Israeli towns like this one and intercontinental rockets.

The effort, partly financed by the United States and incorporating advanced American radar and other technology, has been progressing quietly for two decades. But Israeli defense and other analysts say it has now reached a level of maturity that could begin changing the nature of strategic decisions in the region. Centered on the Arrow 2 antimissile system, which has been deployed, the project is being extended to include a longer-range Arrow 3, the David’s Sling interceptor designed to hit lower- and slower-flying cruise missiles, and the Iron Dome system intended to destroy Grads, Katyushas, Qassams and other shorter-range projectiles fired from the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon.

With the Arrow system in operation and the Iron Dome due for deployment next year, Israel “has something to stabilize the situation: the knowledge that an attack will fail,” said Uzi Rubin, a private defense consultant who ran Israel’s missile shield program in the 1990s. Iran, he said, now cannot be assured of a successful first strike against Israel, while groups such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon may find one of their favored tactics undermined.

Advances in Iran’s rocket technology, coupled with its nuclear program, are chief concerns of the United States and Europe, as well as of Israel and other Middle Eastern countries. Alongside diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to curb its nuclear research, missile defense programs have been designed with that country in mind.

The Obama administration decided this week to scrap a Bush-era plan to deploy a longer-range-missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland, and said it would move toward a more intermediate system that better matches its assessment of Iran’s capabilities.

In Israel, the issue is considered a top foreign policy priority. There have been varying Israeli assessments about Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon: The head of the Mossad intelligence agency told a parliament committee over the summer that Iran may be five years away from acquiring an atom bomb, but the head of military intelligence has said it could happen by the end of this year.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, sees Iran’s program as an imminent danger. It “is something that threatens Israel and threatens the region and threatens the peace of the world,” he said during a recent visit to Germany. “There is not much time.”

A recent unannounced trip by Netanyahu to Russia was thought by some Israeli analysts to be linked to the broad set of issues regarding Iran, including Russia’s possible sale of advanced antiaircraft missiles to Tehran and the likelihood that Israel will strike Iran’s nuclear facilities if the United States and Europe cannot find another solution.

But the steady growth of Israel’s missile defenses sheds a different light on the country’s military doctrine and sense of vulnerability.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said this week that he did not consider Iran’s nuclear program an “existential issue” because “Israel is strong.” Part of that strength lies in its nuclear capabilities — never acknowledged but widely presumed to exist — and part in the assumption that the United States would stand behind Israel if it came under attack. But it also rests in the calculation that enough of the country’s air bases and other military facilities would survive a first strike to retaliate effectively.

The sort of deterrence — guaranteed retaliation — that the United States and then-Soviet Union once achieved by deploying nuclear warheads in submarines and keeping bombers aloft is what Israel is striving for through its antimissile systems.

Iran “is radical, but radical does not mean irrational,” Rubin, the defense consultant, said. “They want to change the world, not commit suicide.”

Israel’s program had its origins in the 1980s and grew out of concern about Syria’s suspected acquisition of chemical weapons. It took on added urgency in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when nearly 40 Iraqi Scud missiles hit the Tel Aviv area.

Nearly two-thirds of Israelis say the time is right to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple, according to a Ynet-Gesher survey.

Even half of non-religious Jews favor rebuilding the Holy Temple – an idea politically unthinkable in Israel just 10 or 20 years ago.

The poll was release on the saddest day on the Jewish calendar – the fasting day of Tisha B’Av, or the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av. It commemorates a series of tragedies that befell the Jewish people all on the same day, most significantly the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, which occurred about 656 years apart on the same day. Jewish tradition calls for the reading of Lamentations.

Aside from the destruction of the Jewish Temples, a remarkably large number of massive calamities befell the Jewish people on Tisha B’Av. Jewish rebellion leader Bar Kokhba’s famous revolt against Rome failed in A.D. 136. Following the Roman siege of Jerusalem, the razing of Jerusalem occurred the next year. The first crusade pogrom against Jews in Palestine began on that date in A.D. 1096.

The Jews were expelled from Britain on Tisha B’Av in 1290 and were expelled from Spain that same day in 1492. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising was crushed by the Nazis on that day in May 1943, resulting in the slaughter of about 50,000 Jews.

Nationalists in Israel also mourn the removal of Jews from the Gaza Strip in 2005, which began the day after Tisha B’av.

The book of Lamentations, written in poetic verse, mourns the desolations brought on Jerusalem and the Holy Land by the Chaldeans.

The rebuilding of the Temple is an extremely controversial idea in Israel because currently Jewish access to the Temple Mount is restricted by the Muslim Waqf, which was granted administrative authority over the Jews’ holiest sites, which are occupied by Muslim shrines.

Some Jewish leaders believe access to Jews should be restricted until the Third Temple is built.

Israel recaptured the Temple Mount during the 1967 Six Day War. Currently under Israeli control, Jews and Christians are barred from praying on the Mount.

The Temple Mount was opened to the general public until September 2000, when the Palestinians started their intifada by throwing stones at Jewish worshippers after then-candidate for prime minister Ariel Sharon visited the area.

Following the onset of violence, the new Sharon government closed the Mount to non-Muslims, using checkpoints to control all pedestrian traffic for fear of further clashes with the Palestinians.

The Temple Mount was reopened to non-Muslims in August 2003. It remains open, but only Sundays through Thursdays, 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m., and not on any Christian, Jewish or Muslim holidays or other days considered “sensitive” by the Waqf.

During “open” days, Jews and Christian are allowed to ascend the Mount, usually through organized tours and only if they conform first to a strict set of guidelines, which includes demands that they not pray or bring any “holy objects” to the site. Visitors are banned from entering any of the mosques without direct Waqf permission. Rules are enforced by Waqf agents, who watch tours closely and alert nearby Israeli police to any breaking of their guidelines.

During Tendler’s visit to the mount, he can be heard in the video complaining about the Israeli rules.

“I’m little bit annoyed at the instructions that we get,” he quipped, “as if we were aliens and have to be told how to behave on [the Temple Mount].”

King Solomon built the First Temple in the 10th century B.C. The Babylonians destroyed it in 586 B.C. The Jews built the Second Temple in 515 B.C. after Jerusalem was freed from Babylonian captivity. The Romans destroyed the Second Temple in A.D. 70.

The First Temple stood for about 400 years, the second for almost 600. Both Temples served as the center of religious worship for the whole Jewish nation. All Jewish holidays centered on worship at the Temple – the central location for the offering of sacrifices and the main gathering place for the Jewish people.

According to the Talmud, God created the world from the foundation stone of the Temple Mount.

The site is believed to be the biblical Mount Moriah, where Abraham fulfilled God’s test of faith by demonstrating his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Jewish tradition also holds that Mashiach – literally “the anointed one,” the Jewish Messiah – will come and rebuild the third and final temple on the Mount in Jerusalem and bring redemption to the entire world.

The Western Wall, called the Kotel in Hebrew, is the one part of the Temple Mount that survived the Roman destruction of the Second Temple and stands to this day in Jerusalem.

The Temple Mount has remained a focal point for Jewish services for thousands of years. Prayers for a return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple have been uttered three times daily by religious Jews since the destruction of the Second Temple. Throughout all the centuries of Jewish exile from their land, thorough documentation shows the Jews never gave up their hope of returning to Jerusalem and reestablishing their Temple. To this day Jews worldwide pray facing the Western Wall, while Muslims turn their backs away from the Temple Mount and pray toward Mecca.

Muslims constructed the al-Aqsa Mosque around A.D. 709 to serve as a place of worship near a famous shrine, the gleaming Dome of the Rock, built by an Islamic caliph, or supreme ruler.

About 100 years ago, Muslims began to associate al‐-Aqsa in Jerusalem with the place Muhammad ascended to heaven. Islamic tradition states Muhammad took a journey in a single night from “a sacred mosque” – believed to be in Mecca in southern Saudi Arabia – to “the farthest mosque,” and from a rock there ascended to heaven to receive revelations from Allah that became part of the Quran.

While Palestinians and many Muslim countries claim exclusivity over the Mount, and while their leaders strenuously deny the Jewish historic connection to the site, things weren’t always this way. In fact, historically, Muslims never claimed the al-Aqsa Mosque as their “third holiest site” and always recognized the existence of the Jewish Temples.

According to an Israeli attorney, Shmuel Berkovits, Islamic tradition mostly disregarded Jerusalem. He points out in his book “How Dreadful is this Place!” that Muhammad was said to loathe Jerusalem and what it stood for to the other monotheistic faiths.

Muhammad also made a point of eliminating pagan sites of worship and sanctifying only one place – the Kaaba in Mecca – to signify the unity of Allah. As late as the 14th century, Islamic scholar Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya, whose writings later influenced the strict Wahhabi movement in Arabia, ruled that sacred Islamic sites exist only on the Arabian Peninsula, and that “in Jerusalem, there is not a place one calls sacred, and the same holds true for the tombs of Hebron.”

Not until the late 19th century – when Jews started immigrating to Palestine – did Muslim scholars claim that Muhammad tied his horse to the Western Wall and associate Muhammad’s purported night journey with the Temple Mount.

Tests of a missile-defense system meant to shieldIsrael from Iranian attack were aborted over the past week on three occasions because of various malfunctions, Israeli defense officials said Thursday.

In the latest case, an upgraded version of the Arrow II – a system being developed by state-run Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. and Chicago-based Boeing Co. – was tested off the coast of California on Wednesday, they said.

But communication glitches between the missile and the radar led U.S. defense officials to abort the test before an intercepting missile could be fired, they said.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose details of the tests, which were carried out in the U.S. because that would allow for greater distances than would be possible in Israel, Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror said.

The Arrow is part of a multilayered missile defense system Israel is working on to protect it from all forms of attack, ranging from short-range rocket fire from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip to longer-range threats from Iran.

Dror said tests of the same Arrow system in Israel earlier this year were “very successful.” He said malfunctions of systems still in their experimental stage were to be expected and said other tests were called off on Friday and Monday.

The defense officials said the improved Arrow II was meant to intercept a dummy Iranian Shihab missile, which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. But U.S. officials blocked the launch of an intercepting missile because of the communications glitch, the Israelis said.

Iran’s Shihab-3 has a range of up to 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers), putting Israel well within striking distance.

Isaac Ben-Israel, a retired general and weapons expert, said the interceptor wasn’t fired because it is too expensive to use in a test that isn’t expected to go according to plan. He said such glitches are common when developing new systems and he did not consider it a significant setback.

“I expect that within a short period of time, after they determine exactly what happened, they will repeat this experiment and then we will know if it works or not,” Ben-Israel said.

Israel sees Iran as its biggest threat, because of its nuclear program and development of medium-rangeballistic missiles. Those fears have been compounded by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‘s persistent anti-Israeli rhetoric.

Israel, like many in the international community, rejects Iran’s claims that its nuclear program is only to produce energy.

An operational version of Arrow II is partially deployed, and the U.S. and Israel are in the preliminary stages of developing an upgraded Arrow III.

The homegrown “Iron Dome” system is designed to bring down short-range rockets of the kind Palestinian and Lebanese militants use. Last week, Israeli officials reported a successful live test of the system.

The Arrow project was spurred largely by the failure of the U.S. military‘s Patriot missiles to intercept Iraqi Scud rockets that struck Israel in the 1991 Gulf War.